What We Talk About When We Talk About Baseball

by Jesse Gloyd

When I was ten years old, my grandparents moved from their house on Francis St. to a condo in mid-town Ventura. A large blue wraparound couch with a built-in recliner filled the living room. On the wall above the main section of the couch hung framed labels from orange crates; and to their left, an autographed picture of the Gashouse Gang. It’s not the complete 1934 Cardinal team; rather, single photos of Dizzy and Paul Dean, Frankie Frisch, Leo Durocher, Joe Medwick, and Pepper Martin with autographs gathered at various times and places scribbled on business card sized pieces of paper.

My Grandpa; we called him Poppo, grew up in Southern Missouri and played on some of the same fields as Mickey Mantle would a few years later. He wasn’t much of a baseball player; however, and wouldn’t follow it much in his life, aside from glancing at the occasional story in the paper or in phone conversations with his brother Bob. Whenever we’d visit their Prairie Village home in Kansas we’d sit on the back porch, sip Pepsi, eat potato chips, and talk through the damp summer air about the Royals. We’d try to one up each other with the baseball encyclopedia that was our collective memory; usually getting the facts wrong, however assured we were in what we were saying.

Later in the same year that my grandparents moved into the condo in mid-town, my Dad took me to a barbecue in Santa Maria. Santa Maria’s not of too much note, aside from it being the town that made tri-tip famous. Anyhow, the barbecue was a fundraiser put together by Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese baseball man, who’d managed in Japan, been a scout for the Giants, and eventually ended up as the athletic commissioner for Washington state. For several years in a row, he invited people like Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Durocher, Pete Rose and several other old players who smelled like cigarettes and cocktails to sign autographs for charity at the barbecue. The event was a relatively good deal, as twenty dollars or so, if I remember correct, would get a tri-tip dinner, with garlic bread, beans, salad, and an autograph from any of the mentioned Hall of Famers.

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“Jesse, I’d like you to meet someone,” said my Dad as he pulled me away from a group of kids who were trying to get the autograph of Santa Maria local, Robin Ventura.

“Okay,” I said. Walking to the far side of the room, I was stopped by an older man who was wearing a brown tweed sport coat and having a drink. “Where’d you get that hat?” he asked.

“For my Birthday,” I said.

“Can I see it?” I took it off and handed it too him. It was a late thirties Brooklyn Dodger hat; the white one with the blue stripes. “I didn’t know they still made these,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“I don’t know, I got it for my Birthday.”

“You should have him sign it,” said my dad. I handed it to him with a black Sharpie. He signed it just below the “B.”

“Thanks,” said my dad as I put it back on my head.

We walked through the rows of tables and chairs as workers in stained white dress shirts cleared Styrofoam plates and plastic forks. “Who was that?” I asked. “Al Gionfriddo,” he said. “He made a famous catch off Joe DiMaggio in the World Series.” “Oh,” I said as we came up to an old man who, upon recollection, didn’t look too much different than Al Gionfriddo.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cobb?” asked my dad. “Yes,” said Mr. Cobb. “I wanted you to meet my son, Jesse.” He looked surprised and happy in the way that old people do. I shook his wrinkled and leathery hand. “Hello, Jesse. I’m Jim Cobb.” “Hi,” I said. “Do you know who my father was?” I nodded my head in assumption. He went on to spend the evening recounting stories of his father and baseball and the people he met. He smelled like cigarettes and alcohol and bore the blood of arguably the best and most vicious player from the first part of the century.

I don’t remember much of what he had to say, other than that I should do well in school. One story sticks out; though, that was later recounted in the Ken Burns documentary. Mr. Cobb told of a trip he took with his dad to a liquor store in South Carolina. The documentary gave a real dramatic vocal reenactment of the meeting between the two greats; though Jim recalled it as a simple introduction of Joe Jackson to himself by his dad, as “the greatest hitter that ever lived.” I guess it seemed like a nice thing to say; however much Cobb actually believed it, seeing as I’m hard pressed to believe Ty Cobb saw anyone as being better than himself.

The meeting between Jackson and Cobb seemed sad to me in a sense. Both were looked upon as two of the great hitters from the “Dead Ball Era;” both implicated in separate gambling scandals in 1919; Cobb is acquitted, Jackson banned from baseball for life; Cobb enters the Hall of Fame on his first try; Jackson publicly disgraced. I’m not really sure how much it all matters. I assume Joe Jackson didn’t kill anyone, which is something he has on Ty, but I’m only going on assumption. They’re both long gone; same as the players on the wall at Poppo’s house.

I sat and had a cup of coffee last Saturday morning with Poppo. His wife, my Grandma, had died the day earlier and he was having a hard time keeping it together. “Time keeps moving and it’s taking me with it and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said to me. All I could do was nod my head.

Later that afternoon, I sat by the pool next to my fiancé, and read a book. It was a good book about the summer of a young man who’s just graduated from college. It takes place in Pittsburgh, a town I’m not too familiar with, but felt like moving to when I graduated from college. Pittsburgh seemed isolated and different at the time. I’ve never been there, so it seemed like a good place to start, a good place to rent a small apartment, and a good place to listen to Duke Ellington play Blue Skies on a big grand piano while lying on my back on scattered leaves and unmowed grass.

The season starts today for the Dodgers. After heated arguments with my dad last year regarding Dodger personnel moves, my mom invoked a rule around the house that we weren't aloud to talk baseball. It was like something of a canyon had grown between our respective ideologies. Some might say that baseball doesn't matter in the long run, that it's not something that should be taken so seriously. I guess it's true, but the memory of telling stories about the Royals in Prairie Village means a hell of a lot more to me than any political or philosophical discussion of the past year. Baseball digs deep into the fabric of this country. It is the thing that dulls the pain of winter for many of us. It softens the blow of reality in a way.

This last weekend, Poppo took down pictures of my Grandma that were around the condo. It's understandable that he would do such a thing. The picture of the Gashouse Gang is still up, though. It's been moved into the den and sits above his computer. In 1934 nobody had walked on the moon, Poppo was nine, Jimmie Rodgers was king of the radio, and Dizzy Dean, with thirty wins, was more popular than the President.